Artist Books, through the artists' fine thinking of "book space", transfer and mix freely the reading of the text, the appreciation of the visual and the touch of materials. THey have become a new art form and the next phase of the history of books. Artists design, illustrate, print all by themselves, and perform the elements like text, image, paper, material and ink to the height of an artwork. On October 19, 2019, the 2019 International Seminar of Artist Books and the Founding Ceremony of International Artist Book Association was held at the Lecture Hall at CAFA Art Museum (CAFAM). 14 artists, researchers, educators, collectors and important influencers in the development of artist books from around the world conducted keynote speech, and engaged in discussion with Chinese and international scholars in artist books. The event was organized by the Artron Art Group, with academic support from the CAFA Art Museum, and presented by Professor Xu Bing of the Central Academy of Fine Arts.
Gao Gao, Director Assisant at CAFA Art Museum
Gao Gao, director assistant at CAFA Art Museum hosted the seminar and the founding ceremony. The seminar began with a speech by Peng Gan, president of Artron Art Group. He raised the example of an artist book Artron made together with Apple, Inc. in 2016, to illustrate the necessity of printed matter in our time. Peng Gan believed that the choice of the world-leading tech company Apple to pay tribute to its founder at the 5th anniversary of his death may act as a motivation for book makers to think about the publicity, artistry and collection value of paper books.
Zhang Zikang, Director of CAFA Art Museum
CAFAM director Zhang Zikang said in his speech that books, unlike other art works, have the sense of touch that can draw the audience closer. As an independent kind of artwork, books themselves have the possibility to be extended further to the field of fine arts.
Xu Bing, Professor at Central Academy of Fine Arts
Professor Xu Bing was the academic presenter and commentator through the seminar. As he spoke in his speech, books are looked at and judged with polarizing perspectives. On the one hand, the development of technology provides new context for the spread of knowledge, on the other, books as artifacts are receiving increasing attentions. Chidren's books, as an utterly important book category, are also facing a series of problems: Will the sentiments for books of today's adults be inherited by the next generation? Which helps the children absorb more contemporary civilization and information, the touch screen children come into contact with in young age or the paper books? Xu Bing believes that although the adults won't be able to play the traditional role of cultural inheritor, books still shine with divinity thanks to the power of thinking they carry, and are connected with contemporary science with its spatial and material characters.
Sarah Chalabi (Lebanon)
Founder of the Beirut-based publishing house, Dongola Limited Editions, Sarah Chalabi gave a speech titled Unconventional Perspective: IMAGE | WORD | ARTIST BOOKS, and made detailed introduction on the publishing house and the five artist books whose production she participated in. Named after the Nubian ancient cultural town, the publishing house devoted itself to the cooperation between artists, writers and designers, to explore a new way of connecting text and image. From the first fine art photography book The Distance is Always Other (In this book, street views of Lebanon in 2016 are counterposed with historical photos in 1973) to Thus Spoke Zarathustra designed by Reza Abedini, we can see how books interact with the sensitive social and political situation around creators as a material of thinking and feeling.
Jiang Xun (China)
Founder of the Mofan Bookstore Jiang Xun gave a speech titled "Open a Page - An Overview of the Handcraft and Packaging of Ancient Chinese Books", in four parts: Broken Bridge, Inheritance, Tradition and Continuation. First, Jiang raised the example of the Liukeng Village in Fujian, showing how the ancient paper making base is preserved - a vivid yet pressing example of a cultural broken bridge. Following that, using his experience as an example, Jiang presented the way to inherit traditional techniques using modern distribution approaches, and raised three concepts: Build, share and expose - meaning that the cultural interitance cannot do without bulding and sharing culture, and exposing the false traditions. In the end, Jiang gave structured introduction of the binding methods in ancient book making, and pointed out that inheritance of traditions should make changes on the elements that can be changed, and stick to the core spirit that highlighs the unity of heaven, earth and the humanity.
Florencia San Martin (Chile)
From the perspective of decolonization, Florencia San Martin traced the development of Latin American artist books, and the decolonized aesthetics of the artist books since the second half of the 20th century in Latin America. In 1992, artist Alfredo Jaar created three maps and a Chilean passport, and named them Two or Three Things I Imagine about Them. Photos in the maps show gold mines in Brazil and the concentration camps with high walls, with text "Opening New Doors" printed in imperialist layout. The artist used such design to respond to the first encounter between the capitalism and the American New World 500 years ago. At the same time, the gap between the first and the third world is still huge. Many decolonial practices by Latin American artists were presented in artist books. Many artists were also writers and publishers, like Felipe Ehrenberg and Ulises Carrión. These artists engaged in the fight against culture, memory and history in the form of writing and art creation. Behind these artist books are the creators' strong mind and sensitivity the time and the politics.
Kirsten Rann (Australia)
In her speech "The Art in Artist Books of Australia and the South Pacific", Kirsten Rann introduced how the artist books there reflect the history and body experience of the aboriginals. Nicholas Jones' English Music counterposed the outline of the 1770 Australian map with a painting of an English concert, to reflect the influence of foreign cultures imposed on the Australian aboriginals. Judy Watson's artist book, painted with blood, reflects the miserable history of the Australian aboriginals. Alick Tipoti showed the unity of the universe and soul with printmaking. Most artists Rann talked about are descendants of aboriginals. They extracted the core elements related to their own experience in complicated cultural relations, and mixed their inherent characters, rooted in their DNA, in their works.
Huang Xiaoming (China)
Huang Xiaoming, associate professor at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts shared her practical teaching experience in her course about handmade books. Compared with traditional books, handmade artist books highlight conceptual thinking, and are free from the limit of the publishers, book dealers and the cost budget, and have more space for free creation. Huang showed the homeworks her students did in the Handmade Books optional course. The students dug into the traditional culture, observed their daily life, and made books that feature both sense of design and their cultural gene. Works like play with food gave thorough thinking in details, and through details they realized the interaction between the book and the readers. Huang also encouraged the students to boldly apply unconventional shapes in layout design, and taught traditional binding methods and crafts in her course, guiding the students through the beauty of books.
Tim Mosely (Australia)
Tim Mosely introduced the modern art publishing program of dc3p at Queensland College of Art in his presentation. The program is devoted to the practice and research of artist books, in the frame of print culture and haptic aesthetics. The program also has courses that teach paper making, printmaking and engraving crafts. Mosely quoted Carlo Ginzburg, indicated that the development of printing has caused the dematerialization of the text, and visual sense has become the only working sense in the reading of text. Jacque Derrida also pointed out in 1999 that although the production of art was related to the sense of touch, observation and experience of art was eventually limited to seeing and hearing. Mosely thus used his own handmade books as an example to emphasize the participation of the sense of touch in art. One of his books requires the readers to touch and tear up the upper pages to read to lower ones. He also introduced the book I am Closing My Eye by his friend Ana Paula Estrada. In this book, only through touching that the readers could feel the beauty of the book, the softness and warmness of the pages.
Tan Tan (China)
Tan Tan, teaching assistant from the Studio No.5 of Printmaking Department, Central Academy of Fine Arts, spoke from her practical experience at the studio of how the book binding course transferred from an affiliate to illustration courses to a driven force of the illustration course disciplines. Tan came into touch with Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin's artist book Bible when she studied in Britain. Different from the original Bible, the book is filled with readymade photos that cover the orignal text. It inspired Tan to discover the multiple semantics of a readymade image in a world saturated with images. Tan decided to combine this thinking with Gao Rongsheng's Teaching Illustration.She required her students to extract one to two images from the illustration textbooks in the past ten years, and make a book combining their thinking of "rhythm".
Marshall Weber (America)
Artist Marshall Weber devoted himself to the creation of artist books and the promotion of artist book culture. He curated the first edition of the "DIAMOND LEAVES: Artist Books from around the World" exhibition together with Professor Xu Bing, and took part in the second edition. Weber shared his works in the speech. He prefers combining images with his own poems in his book, and he is good at highlighting the books' materiality using all kinds of materials. For example, in his book Mars, he glued all sorts of materials in the pages, combining the poem he created under the inspiration of P J Harvey's lyrics; In Maple, he picked up maple leaves in an evergreen forest in Washington, wrote poem on them before sewing them into a book; When his ex-wife tore up his book, he decided to make advantage of the pieces and made them into a collage book (Flow). Weber also showed the books he co-created with other people, including photographers, artists and even his daughter. At last, Weber talked about his artist-in-residency experience at the Herzog August Bibliothek. There he saw the first edition of Matisse's Jazz.
Lu Jingren (China)
Book designer and professor at the Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University Lu Jingren gave a speech titled "The Reading Value of the Artist Books", and interpreted the situation paper books are in in the digital age. He first highlighted the importance of paper books by quoting Borges: "I suspect that the human species -- the unique species -- is about to be extinguished, but the Library will endure." He warned then that if the paper books only have the function of conveying text message, they will eventually be replaced by digital books. Only when they offer diverse readability and present narration that reflect time-space relationship that their unique charisma will be manifested. He raised a few examples of innovative Chinese books, such as Old Trades of Jiangsu: A Glimpse, Wen Aiyi's Poems, Material/Non-material and Chinese Ballads, to illustrate the narrowing gap between popular publications and artist books. The publishing industry is no longer satisfied with ordinary publications, and an increasing number of designers are creating books that manifest new concept of reading.
Abed Al Akadiri (Lebanon)
In his speech "A Visual Poetry: Artist Books from the Arab World", artist Abed Al Akadiri introduced a brief historical background of the artist books in the Arab and Islamic art worlds, as well as some important artists who create in the form of books in the Arab World. As a pioneer of modern Arab art, Dia Azzawi found his language in the form of book, and tried to echo the miserable experience of the people after bombings during the Iraq War. Artist Rafa Nasiri, as the first artist that studied in China from the Arab World, grew his interest in calligraphy during his study at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and blended the Chinese book making techniques in his creation. Akadiri specially introduced the artist books made by Syrian artists featuring the chaos of Syria. He believed that book is seen as a good form of creation by Syrian artists in such an unsettled environment.
Zhou Yue (China)
Founder of the abC art book fair Zhou Yue introduced the current situation of self-publishing and art book fairs in China. She established the first art book fair in China under the inspiration of the New York Art Book Fair and Tokyo Art Book Fair, chose participants with the standard of artist books, and shouldered the responsibility of public education, holding workshops, book launches and keynote speeches in the fair. Just like she said, "The best form of a book is an opened book." Books are cheap, democratic, open and flexible. They are never limited to a specific spot, and provide creators with a variety of choices in material, craft and expression. Self-publishing furthermore made a breakthough in the traditional art market, as it requires no middle men and directly reaches the readers. Except for holding art book fair, Zhou Yue's Dreamer FTY also has self-publishing programs, and has published books such as Atmosphere magazine, and Book Book that introduces handmade binding.
Ryoko Adachi (Japan)
Japanese book artist Ryoko Adachi is good at making books out of various forms and materials found in nature. In her speech "Nature/Words - From Plant Forms to Life Science", she accounts for the close relationship between artist books and the world we live in. She is good at observing objects in daily life, and attaches importance to the combination of the new and the old, the traditional and the innovative, natural and manmade materials. She believes that flora could substitute language. She showed the audience some books she made using plants to represent text, including The Song of Bird, a 1.5-meter-long accordion book/installation. Adachi also cares about science and technology, and created Faust, a work based on DNA message, Jack and the Bean, a book made out of her observation of worm bites on leaves, and Annunciation, which discusses the cloning technique from the ethnical perspective. Adachi believes that a free and unlimited working environment is utterly important for the creation of artist books. Although design and approach are very important, it is more important for artists to think about what they want to make into a book.
Chen Qing (China)
Chen Qing, co-founder and chief designer of the Pop-up Book Laboratory, gave a speech titled "The Collection and Creation of Pop-up Books". He is touched by the charismatic transformation between two-dimensional and three-dimensional space manifested through pop-up books. He believes that modern pop-up books should be moveable books that carry mechanical gadget that does not exceed the enduring capacity of the papers. Chen also introduced the development of pop-up books from 1250 to 2000, and the evolution of design in Europe, America and Asia, and adviced pop-up book fans to collect works with real value according to their time of creation, location, theme and artist. In the end, Chen shared his experience in pop-up book making.
Xu Xiaoding (China)
Associate professor at the Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University, artist and curator Xu Xiaoding gave a speech titled "The Doctrine of the Book - Creation and Research of Artist Books". Being an artist himself, Xu summarized the methods and rules of the making of artist books: to raise people's awareness of respect towards knowledge inheritance and artistic value; to form a natural interactive relationship with appreciators; to enrich and experiment on creative languages; to take count of the communication of both text and image; to diversify the structures and binding. Meanwhile, Xu analyzed the status quo of artist books in the artistic context of contemporary Chinese society, and looked ahead to its future combining his own research background.
Founding of the International Artist Book Association
Following the seminar was the founding ceremony of the International Artist Book Association. The association is initiated by Wan Jie, director of the Artron Art Group, and professor Xu Bing of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. The NGO will associate with book artists, researchers, collectors and fans around the world to improve the development of artist book. The first board of directors of the Association consists of seven members. Four of them, Marshall Weber, Lu Jingren, Zhu Yingchun and Guo Leilei, were present, and received letter of appointment from president of the Artron Art Group Peng Gan. As one of the most important events of the Association, the third edition of "DIAMOND LEAVES: Artist Books from around the World" will be held at CAFA Art Museum next April. It will invite the artists and researchers of this seminar to recommend and present more excellent artist books from the world for the public.
Group photo that marks the founding of the International Artist Book Association
Mr. Peng Gan hands the letter of appointment to the present directors of the Association.
Written by Hu Xinrong, Lu Yufan and Zheng Lijun
Edited by Zhuang Shuangbo
Translated by Lu Yufan
Photo by artron.net
